Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Working on getting healthy or just trying to keep your body the way it is, free from complications, today we start an exploration of ARTIFICIAL sweeteners and the vast world of other sugar SUBSTITUTES!

First off, what is an artificial sweetener and what is not? Some of you might find it very easy to tell the difference, but others may not have a clue. The definition of an artificial sweetener is: A synthetic sugar substitute that may be derived from natural occurring substances . Other sugar substitutes come from natural sources like fruit and milk.

Each sweetener whether artificial or not has different baking and cooking capabilities and can change the texture/taste of the food you make. I've looked around and found this list from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/artificial-sweeteners/MY00073 and as far as I can see it was only missing one item which is swerve and I believe it is because of how new this product is, but it does have natural sweeteners on the right side that contain mass amounts of sugars so we wont be covering those items.

Artificial sweeteners

Sugar alcohols

Novel sweeteners

Natural sweeteners

Acesulfame potassium (Sunett, Sweet One)

Erythritol

Stevia extracts (Pure Via, Truvia)

Agave nectar

Aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet)

Hydrogenated starch hydrolysate

Tagatose (Naturlose)

Date sugar

Neotame

Isomalt

Trehalose

Fruit juice concentrate

Saccharin (SugarTwin, Sweet'N Low)

Lactitol

Honey

Sucralose (Splenda)

Maltitol

Maple syrup

Mannitol

Molasses

Sorbitol

Xylitol

As you can see there are many choices out there when it comes to sugar substitutes and it can be very beneficial to know what the side effects to these can be. Just of the top of my head I know that Maltitol can cause bloating and whats known as a laxative effect like many other sugar alcohols listed above.

I don't know about you but I love dessert, but without the side of pepto! Come on we deserve better then that.

So lets see what the most popular sugar substitute is today...What I come up with is aspartame (equal and nutrasweet). Not a whole lot of popularity contests going on so not much research to base it on, but what I am basing this on is that it is the most sold as of right now. If some one knows something different, please step and mention it. Now a days the Internet is so cluttered with junk it's hard to find an answer sometimes.

So why is it sold the most? Well it was one of the first sweeteners to come out that was not found to be cancer forming and that joined with a low-calorie intake, it became a hit very quickly. It nearly was tanked after a false email was spread claiming there were a hundred different ways aspartame was bad for you. That was quickly squashed and the business has been going up ever since.

I want to leave you with this for now and open this up for comments. I will be checking in periodically through the night. I realize there is a vast amount of knowledge to be further discussed and I hope to cover that in the next few weeks to come, but I would like to keep tonight's discussion on this post please.

JOIN tomorrow as we explore a recipe of my choice and the different sweeteners I used to see what the different outcomes were.